SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
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Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#2Frustratingly, though the article goes into how replacing/upgrading the whole control system will be an big, expensive project, they don't attempt to say why they can't just update the "read from floppy" part of the system to read the same info from a modern component.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#3Can someone just ask Foone or lcamtuf to help them get it running off an internet-connected toothbrush or something? It seems like there are so many people doing complex reverse-engineering of ancient stuff _just for kicks_ that this floppy-disk issue just shouldn't require a massive project.
yes, I know safety-critical systems are different. I also expect that the floppy-disk issue is just the easiest problem to explain of a long chain of terrible legacy lock-ins. However, if they're literally holding their breath every morning when it's time to IPL the system off a floppy...that part sounds solvable.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#4>Turns out that in 1998, SFMTA had the latest cutting edge technology when they installed their automatic train control system.
> "We were the first agency in the U.S. to adopt this particular technology but it was from an era that computers didn't have a hard drive so you have to load the software from floppy disks on to the computer,"
In 1998, most personal computers already had hard drives [0]. From Wikipedia "The IBM PC/XT in 1983 included an internal 10 MB HDD, and soon thereafter, internal HDDs proliferated on personal computers."
The 3.5" floppy is from the mid 80's, again from Wiki [1] "In the early 1980s, many manufacturers introduced smaller floppy drives and media in various formats. A consortium of 21 companies eventually settled on a 3½-inch design..."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk
Why do I have to do this research instead of the "journalist"?
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#5>Turns out that in 1998, SFMTA had the latest cutting edge technology when they installed their automatic train control system. > "We were the first agency in the U.S. to adopt this particular technology but it was from an era that computers didn't have a hard drive so you have to load the software from floppy disks on to the computer," In 1998, most personal computers already had hard drives [0]. From Wikipedia "The…
Given that the agency seems not to be able to cope with change at a reasonable pace, I wonder if 1998 was just when the control system project finished, having been planned and started several years prior.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#6"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" definitely has its practical limits
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#7I don't understand.
The retro community has proven reliably that a simple Raspberry PI can easily bit-bang floppy controllers. We have myriad floppy-to-SD card adapters.
Surely a plug-and-play solution that removes the area of most concern (reliance on the media itself) should be easily achievable in a few months?
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#8I don't understand. The retro community has proven reliably that a simple Raspberry PI can easily bit-bang floppy controllers. We have myriad floppy-to-SD card adapters. Surely a plug-and-play solution that removes the area of most concern (reliance on the media itself) should be easily achievable in a few months?
Speaking naively (I have no insight into the situation), I would guess that this is probably the result of the officials in charge not having technical understanding and contracting it all out. Contractors aren’t going to be choosing the quick or cost-effective option, because that’d undercut their profits.
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#9Didn't it used to be that they broke often when you would keep them in the sun, even for a little?
Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'
#10Well... I feel slightly better about Boston constantly pushing back being able to use our phones as tickets after seeing the timeline for the transition and how just that they are still doing this.
What is it about public transit in the US that it is so... bad? Inadequate funding seems to be the easy one, but the MBTA (Boston) doesn't even handle the funds it has well. Yeah it needs more funding but there is also just a core issue to how it's run.
It is sad to see the state of public transit in this country, particularly in dense urban areas where we should be discouraging Car use as much as possible.
I am very curious what other countries are doing that we are not.